India's nuclear energy agreement with the U.S. will have implications for stability in South Asia as it may lead to weapons production from unsupervised plants, Pakistan's government said.
Maintaining a strategic balance in the region “would have been better served if the United States had considered a package approach for Pakistan and India,'' the National Command Authority, a body that includes President Pervez Musharraf, said yesterday in a statement, according to the official Associated Press of Pakistan.
India and the U.S. completed their accord last month to develop nuclear energy cooperation. India and Pakistan's civilian and military nuclear programs remain outside the 1970 United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which they haven't signed.
India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998. They have improved relations since 2003, restoring diplomatic, sporting and transportation links and improving cooperation on trade, combating terrorism and fighting drug trafficking.
Pakistan will “act with responsibility'' in maintaining its nuclear arms program and will avoid an arms race, the National Command Authority said, according to APP.
The country will continue to work with the international community on efforts to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, it said. The body consists of government, military and civilian leaders, including scientists, APP said.
“Pakistan will neither be oblivious to its security requirements, nor to the needs of its economic development, which demands growth in the energy sector,'' it said.
Energy Needs
Pakistan's government estimates the energy needs of South Asia's second biggest economy after India will more than double to 177 million metric tons of oil equivalent by 2020. India's atomic power now accounts for about 3 percent of its total electricity production.
Under the India-U.S. agreement, reprocessing of spent atomic fuel will be under the safeguards of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
India still has to reach an agreement with the IAEA for inspections of the reprocessing plant and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a 45-nation forum dedicated to limiting the spread of atomic weapons, must approve the agreement. After that, President George W. Bush will submit the accord to Congress for approval, attempting to overcome concerns among lawmakers that India's nuclear weapons program would benefit.
The U.S. Congress in December passed legislation to allow the agreement to go forward. The bill reversed decades of U.S. policy that barred nuclear exports to India after it carried out its first nuclear bomb test in 1974. Pakistan's first test of a nuclear weapon was in May 1998.
